The 2011-12 season at the Repertory Theater of St. Louis has opened
with a vigorous production of John Logan's Tony-winning dramatic profile
of abstract-expressionist artist Mark Rothko. Featuring intense
performances from Brian Dykstra as Rothko, and Matthew Carlson as his
sometimes hapless, sometimes acerbic assistant Ken, under the meticulous
direction of Steve Woolf, the play adumbrates two crucial years in the
1950s during which Rothko's artistic identity and his fortune hang in the
balance.

The character and behavior of the assistant are, apparently, fictional,
but the portrait of Rothko himself is largely drawn from life. His
mannerisms, his clothes, and especially his work habits are faithfully
rendered. His best lines are taken more or less verbatim from the
sometimes pretentious and always bombastic public pronouncements with
which the real Rothko evidently sought to create a comfortable distance
between himself and the public. The man was
self-consciously intellectual, widely if not deeply read in works about
the creative process, and highly aware of the monetary value of making up
a sophisticated aesthetic justification for his work. The fact that his
paintings now sell for tens of millions of dollars is ample testimony to
his genius; whether that genius is properly located in his paintings
themselves or in his self-promotion is a matter about which reasonable
people might disagree.

But, within the context of the play, Rothko's personality and the
convoluted, almost Beckett-like flow of his ideas are beside the point. To
take this play at anything other than face value, to read or to experience
it as criticism or biography, an exploration and evaluation of Rothko, or
of Rothko's paintings, or of Rothko's philosophy, is to commit the same,
tiresome error committed by all who want art to be "about" more than the
experience of confronting it. What matters in the theater is exactly the
skill with which Logan extracts an avatar from the real Rothko, imagines a
dramatic foil, sets a context, and puts both men and words into motion.

In scene after scene, the interplay between dark and light, between the
character Rothko's deepening delusion and insecurity and Ken's ingenuous
desire to read genius into the master and all that he touches, creates
astonishing dramatic intensity. Perhaps the most remarkable of a bounty of
remarkable scenes comes midway through the play's single act, when the two
men apply carefully-mixed primer to a wall-sized stretched canvas. This
simple enough act, with both characters completely absorbed in the work,
quickly becomes a dance, intensifies into something bordering on frenzy,
and climaxes in exhausted stillness, with Rothko lighting what is
obviously intended to mock a post-coital cigarette. Watching it, I found
myself holding my breath. Surely this degree of absorption is what Logan
wants, as Rothko claims he wants those who see his work to be enveloped in
it.

Michael Ganio has created a magnificent set for this production,
crowded and complex yet never claustrophobic. Phil Monat lights it with
great sensitivity for the demands of the script. As always, Dorothy
Marshall Englis contributes masterful costumes. Steve Woolf, who makes no
bones about his admiration for Rothko's work, keeps the intensity turned
up but firmly under control.

In short, John Logan's play about Mark Rothko is a marvelous piece of
theater, beautifully realized in this Repertory Theater of St. Louis
production, and certain to appeal even to those who are less enthusiastic
about Rothko's paintings. It will run through October 2; when the word
gets out, tickets are likely to become scarce.